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Linus Torvalds: I can pretty much guarantee that as long as everybody does cross-development, the platform won't be all that stable. Or successful. Some people think that "the cloud" means that the instruction set doesn't matter. Develop at home, deploy in the cloud. That's bullshit. If you develop on x86, then you're going to want to deploy on x86, because you'll be able to run what you test "at home" (and by "at home" I don't mean literally in your home, but in your work environment). Which means that you'll happily pay a bit more for x86 cloud hosting, simply because it matches what you can test on your own local setup, and the errors you get will translate better. This is true even if what you mostly do is something ostensibly cross-platform like just run perl scripts or whatever. Simply because you'll want to have as similar an environment as possible.

Which in turn means that cloud providers will end up making more money from their x86 side, which means that they'll prioritize it, and any ARM offerings will be secondary and probably relegated to the mindless dregs (maybe front-end, maybe just static html, that kind of stuff). Guys, do you really not understand why x86 took over the server market? It wasn't just all price. It was literally this "develop at home" issue. Thousands of small companies ended up having random small internal workloads where it was easy to just get a random whitebox PC and run some silly small thing on it yourself. Then as the workload expanded, it became a "real server". And then once that thing expanded, suddenly it made a whole lot of sense to let somebody else manage the hardware and hosting, and the cloud took over. Do you really not understand? This isn't rocket science. This isn't some made up story. This is literally what happened, and what killed all the RISC vendors, and made x86 be the undisputed king of the hill of servers, to the point where everybody else is just a rounding error. Something that sounded entirely fictional a couple of decades ago. Without a development platform, ARM in the server space is never going to make it. Trying to sell a 64-bit "hyperscaling" model is idiotic, when you don't have customers and you don't have workloads because you never sold the small cheap box that got the whole market started in the first place.

Linus Torvalds: I can pretty much guarantee that as long as everybody does cross-development, the platform won't be all that stable. Or successful. Some people think that "the cloud" means that the instruction set doesn't matter. Develop at home, deploy in the cloud. That's bullshit. If you develop on x86, then you're going to want to deploy on x86, because you'll be able to run what you test "at home" (and by "at home" I don't mean literally in your home, but in your work environment). Which means that you'll happily pay a bit more for x86 cloud hosting, simply because it matches what you can test on your own local setup, and the errors you get will translate better. This is true even if what you mostly do is something ostensibly cross-platform like just run perl scripts or whatever. Simply because you'll want to have as similar an environment as possible.

Which in turn means that cloud providers will end up making more money from their x86 side, which means that they'll prioritize it, and any ARM offerings will be secondary and probably relegated to the mindless dregs (maybe front-end, maybe just static html, that kind of stuff). Guys, do you really not understand why x86 took over the server market? It wasn't just all price. It was literally this "develop at home" issue. Thousands of small companies ended up having random small internal workloads where it was easy to just get a random whitebox PC and run some silly small thing on it yourself. Then as the workload expanded, it became a "real server". And then once that thing expanded, suddenly it made a whole lot of sense to let somebody else manage the hardware and hosting, and the cloud took over. Do you really not understand? This isn't rocket science. This isn't some made up story. This is literally what happened, and what killed all the RISC vendors, and made x86 be the undisputed king of the hill of servers, to the point where everybody else is just a rounding error. Something that sounded entirely fictional a couple of decades ago. Without a development platform, ARM in the server space is never going to make it. Trying to sell a 64-bit "hyperscaling" model is idiotic, when you don't have customers and you don't have workloads because you never sold the small cheap box that got the whole market started in the first place.

An anonymous reader sends this news from Phoronix: "The C++ standards committee is looking at adopting a Cairo C++ interface as part of a future revision to the ISO C++ standard to provide 2D drawing. Herb Sutter, the chair of the ISO C++ standards committee, sent out a message to the Cairo developers this week about their pursuit to potentially standardize a basic 2D drawing library for ISO C++. The committee right now is looking at using a C++-ified version of Cairo. Sutter wrote, 'we are currently investigating the direction of proposing a mechanically C++-ified version of Cairo. Specifically, "mechanically C++-ified" means taking Cairo as-is and transforming it with a one-page list of mechanical changes such as turning _create functions into constructors, (mystruct*, int length) function parameters to vector<struct>& parameters, that sort of thing — the design and abstractions and functions are unchanged.'"

New submitter asliarun writes "David Kanter of Realworldtech recently posted his take on Intel's upcoming Knights Landing chip. The technical specs are massive, showing Intel's new-found focus on throughput processing (and possibly graphics). 72 Silvermont cores with beefy FP and vector units, mesh fabric with tile based architecture, DDR4 support with a 384-bit memory controller, QPI connectivity instead of PCIe, and 16GB on-package eDRAM (yes, 16GB). All this should ensure throughput of 3 teraflop/s double precision. Many of the architectural elements would also be the same as Intel's future CPU chips — so this is also a peek into Intel's vision of the future. Will Intel use this as a platform to compete with nVidia and AMD/ATI on graphics? Or will this be another Larrabee? Or just an exotic HPC product like Knights Corner?"

diegocgteleline.es writes "Linus Torvalds has chimed in on the recently flamed-up (again) micro vs monolithic kernel, but this time with an interesting and unexpected point of view. From the article: 'The real issue, and it's really fundamental, is the issue of sharing address spaces. Nothing else really matters. Everything else ends up flowing from that fundamental question: do you share the address space with the caller or put in slightly different terms: can the callee look at and change the callers state as if it were its own (and the other way around)?'"

News for nerds writes "The ISSCC 2005, the "Chip Olympics", is over and David T. Wang at Real World Technologies put a very objective review of the CELL processor (the slides for the briefing are also available), covering all the aspects disclosed at the conference. Besides the much touted 256 GFlops single-precision floating point performance the CELL processor has 25-30 GFlops in double-precision, which is useful enough for scientific computation. Linus seems interested in CELL, too."

News for nerds writes "The ISSCC 2005, the "Chip Olympics", is over and David T. Wang at Real World Technologies put a very objective review of the CELL processor (the slides for the briefing are also available), covering all the aspects disclosed at the conference. Besides the much touted 256 GFlops single-precision floating point performance the CELL processor has 25-30 GFlops in double-precision, which is useful enough for scientific computation. Linus seems interested in CELL, too."

Richard W.M. Jones writes "This fascinating article, published anonymously, dissects the Transmeta TMS5xxx architecture, revealing how to access and modify the code-morphing code, how the instruction set works, and tells why you won't be able to run Linux directly on this chip."

An anonymous reader writes "Paul DeMone has an excellent article up at Real World Technologies on the future of 64bit computing. Find out where MIPS, HP, Intel, AMD, Sun, Fujitsu, and IBM are headed."

msolnik writes: "Over at RealWorldTech they've published an article on the future of 64-bit performance. This article covers the different technology from Sparc to Hammer. Its a great read if you are looking for information on up-and-coming products from Intel, AMD, Sun, and Compaq."

Dean Kent writes "Simultaneous MultiThreading is a method of getting greater throughput from a processor by essentially implementing multi-tasking within a single CPU. Information on Compaq's plans for SMT in the EV8 can be found in thisan an article and thisand this article. Also, there is some speculation that Intel's Foster CPU (based upon the Willamette core) will also have SMT and that the P4 may even have the circuitry already included, as discussed briefly in forums."

Dean Kent writes "Simultaneous MultiThreading is a method of getting greater throughput from a processor by essentially implementing multi-tasking within a single CPU. Information on Compaq's plans for SMT in the EV8 can be found in thisan an article and thisand this article. Also, there is some speculation that Intel's Foster CPU (based upon the Willamette core) will also have SMT and that the P4 may even have the circuitry already included, as discussed briefly in forums."

Dean Kent writes "Simultaneous MultiThreading is a method of getting greater throughput from a processor by essentially implementing multi-tasking within a single CPU. Information on Compaq's plans for SMT in the EV8 can be found in thisan an article and thisand this article. Also, there is some speculation that Intel's Foster CPU (based upon the Willamette core) will also have SMT and that the P4 may even have the circuitry already included, as discussed briefly in forums."

Dean Kent writes "Simultaneous MultiThreading is a method of getting greater throughput from a processor by essentially implementing multi-tasking within a single CPU. Information on Compaq's plans for SMT in the EV8 can be found in thisan an article and thisand this article. Also, there is some speculation that Intel's Foster CPU (based upon the Willamette core) will also have SMT and that the P4 may even have the circuitry already included, as discussed briefly in forums."

HiyaPower writes: "There is an interesting discussion here about the IBM Power4 chip. While it is most directly compared with the upcoming Alpha, it also has ramifications for the penetration of the IA-64 and/or Sledgehammer into the server market. Conclusion drawn is that the Alpha, etc., may be in for some very tough sledding. Now if only Apple could be persuaded to use these instead of what the article terms its "embedded controller chips...""

"Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue." No, that's for a wedding. For Slashback, try something more like "Something about Intel, something about Mattel, something about TiVO,something about England." Much less romantic, but quite a bit more fun to read.

Alright mister, I'll see your accusatory bluster and raise you a page of cogent explanation. Our own Jamie McCarthy points out: "[Matthew Scala, one] of the authors of cphack has written a very extensive FAQ about the program and his settlement with Cyber Patrol/Mattel." Here's the link to the Cyber Patrol break FAQ.

This just in from Georgetown: Pat Ramsey, omniscient Mac-support guru at Southwestern University (The original University of Texas) participated in the recent ResNet 2000 conference, and wrote with some clarification about the recent Slashdot story on Simson Garfinkle's recommendations on ftp, telnet and other common protocols.

I submitted a blurb on Sunday about Simson Garfinkle keynoting the Resnet 2000 Symposium in Philadelphia. Being there at the conference, I can say that Rob's take on the Chronicle article is a little off. Garfinkle gave a presentation intended to raise awareness of how insecure most campuses are.Telnet and ftp protocols are just two examples of services that use clear-text passwords. He believes that that practice should be banned. Clear-text passwords are too easily sniffed.

But telnet and ftp were just two examples of things that campuses should look at. Even bigger, and the article didn't convey this with it's somewhat sensational headline, is the lack of policies that say in writing what is done with data that is inconspicuously gathered. Search engine queries, cookies, packet sniffs, Cisco Netflow logs, tcpdumps, etc.

This seemed to be of more importance then eliminating telnet and ftp.

Especially good for anyone who didn't read the full text of the article linked to; ftp and telnet may be great protocols, but Garfinkel is arguing they're less suitable than their more secure counterparts. Thanks, Pat!

14 hours ought to be enough for -- oh, nevermind. undef24 writes: "A followup to a slashdot story posted earlier this week. They've published a way to upgrade a 14-hour Tivo to 52 hours on the AVS Forum." The directions are thorough, but these guys make no bones about what TiVO will think of your mucking about in the guts of your previously-sealed machine. And it raises the inevitable, recurrent question: how close is an off-the-shelf Linux hobbyist version that has the same function?

For once, technical information is slightly flashier than the product name. Maro Shim writes "What's Up With Willamette? (Part 1, Part2), a two-part article, is a good one for understanding Willamette, (i.e. Pentium 4) architecture, which is the next generation x86 processor design from Intel. It includes a description of the development roots of Willamette and the basics of how its organization and operation differs from earlier P6 generation processors. In Part 2, he examines the new technology and features of Willamette in more detail and speculate on its implementation, operational characteristics, and performance. This is a must read for CPU enthusiast."

Flashes of Doh from the other side of the pond. Builder writes "Hi. A while back I used the stand.org.uk service to fax my MP. Today I got a reply back. Some things scare me about the reply. It is almost as if my MP refuses to believe the things we and other large groups of people (ISP's, Consumer groups, etc.) have been saying. ... I've posted the letter, as well as a quick disection about why this whole thing (The bill, my reply and the attitude in general) scares me so much. It can be found at http://www.penguinpowered.org.uk/stand/index.html

If you haven't got involved yet, please do so now! Lobby your MP. Make a noise! Remember, the squeaky wheel gets the grease..."

Tell me this wasn't inevitable. nutty writes pointing out that the Connectix lawsuit dropped by Sony has been refiled. Legal maneuvering? War of attrition against those who dare oppose the marketing might of the PlayStation behemoth? Sony!? I wish this one were tougher to believe.

"Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue." No, that's for a wedding. For Slashback, try something more like "Something about Intel, something about Mattel, something about TiVO,something about England." Much less romantic, but quite a bit more fun to read.

Alright mister, I'll see your accusatory bluster and raise you a page of cogent explanation. Our own Jamie McCarthy points out: "[Matthew Scala, one] of the authors of cphack has written a very extensive FAQ about the program and his settlement with Cyber Patrol/Mattel." Here's the link to the Cyber Patrol break FAQ.

This just in from Georgetown: Pat Ramsey, omniscient Mac-support guru at Southwestern University (The original University of Texas) participated in the recent ResNet 2000 conference, and wrote with some clarification about the recent Slashdot story on Simson Garfinkle's recommendations on ftp, telnet and other common protocols.

I submitted a blurb on Sunday about Simson Garfinkle keynoting the Resnet 2000 Symposium in Philadelphia. Being there at the conference, I can say that Rob's take on the Chronicle article is a little off. Garfinkle gave a presentation intended to raise awareness of how insecure most campuses are.Telnet and ftp protocols are just two examples of services that use clear-text passwords. He believes that that practice should be banned. Clear-text passwords are too easily sniffed.

But telnet and ftp were just two examples of things that campuses should look at. Even bigger, and the article didn't convey this with it's somewhat sensational headline, is the lack of policies that say in writing what is done with data that is inconspicuously gathered. Search engine queries, cookies, packet sniffs, Cisco Netflow logs, tcpdumps, etc.

This seemed to be of more importance then eliminating telnet and ftp.

Especially good for anyone who didn't read the full text of the article linked to; ftp and telnet may be great protocols, but Garfinkel is arguing they're less suitable than their more secure counterparts. Thanks, Pat!

14 hours ought to be enough for -- oh, nevermind. undef24 writes: "A followup to a slashdot story posted earlier this week. They've published a way to upgrade a 14-hour Tivo to 52 hours on the AVS Forum." The directions are thorough, but these guys make no bones about what TiVO will think of your mucking about in the guts of your previously-sealed machine. And it raises the inevitable, recurrent question: how close is an off-the-shelf Linux hobbyist version that has the same function?

For once, technical information is slightly flashier than the product name. Maro Shim writes "What's Up With Willamette? (Part 1, Part2), a two-part article, is a good one for understanding Willamette, (i.e. Pentium 4) architecture, which is the next generation x86 processor design from Intel. It includes a description of the development roots of Willamette and the basics of how its organization and operation differs from earlier P6 generation processors. In Part 2, he examines the new technology and features of Willamette in more detail and speculate on its implementation, operational characteristics, and performance. This is a must read for CPU enthusiast."

Flashes of Doh from the other side of the pond. Builder writes "Hi. A while back I used the stand.org.uk service to fax my MP. Today I got a reply back. Some things scare me about the reply. It is almost as if my MP refuses to believe the things we and other large groups of people (ISP's, Consumer groups, etc.) have been saying. ... I've posted the letter, as well as a quick disection about why this whole thing (The bill, my reply and the attitude in general) scares me so much. It can be found at http://www.penguinpowered.org.uk/stand/index.html

If you haven't got involved yet, please do so now! Lobby your MP. Make a noise! Remember, the squeaky wheel gets the grease..."

Tell me this wasn't inevitable. nutty writes pointing out that the Connectix lawsuit dropped by Sony has been refiled. Legal maneuvering? War of attrition against those who dare oppose the marketing might of the PlayStation behemoth? Sony!? I wish this one were tougher to believe.

Kill Switch writes: "There's this ZDNet article about AMD's announcement that they plan to introduce a 64-bit 'Sledgehammer' chip for the desktop (that's right, DEKSTOP); they also announced that they will be releasing new chips based on the new Mustang core and it looks like there will be way too many versions of this (various desktop, and server versions); and they announced mobile versions of the Duron and Athlon, based on the Mustang core." This could just be crazy enough to work! Updated 11:20GMT by timothy: wwelch contributed a link to a pretty good overview of the current 64-bit field, which of course excludes this just-announced AMD, but which helps put it all in perspective.